Siglos circa 515-485, AR 21 mm, 10.59 g. Lion's head r. with open mouth. Rev. Incuse punch. Traité II –. BMC p. xlvi and pl. XXV, 11 (Golgi). Tziambazis 146 (uncertain mint). Very rare. Old cabinet tone and very fine Ex Aufhäuser 21 October 1985, 142 and NAC 114, 2019, 338 sales. From the collection of a Discerning Collector. The lion is one of the most common animal types on Cypriot coinage. Many of the island's kingdoms used it, but each in its own way, so the animal by itself rarely identifies a mint. Marion's earliest silver sigloi have a crouching lion on the obverse, with the naked figure of Phrixos beside a running ram on the reverse. Amathus used a recumbent lion as its standard type, and in the fourth century its smaller silver under Rhoikos paired a lion's head with the forepart of a lion, together with the syllabic sign ro. At Kition, Baalmilk I (479-449 BC) put a seated lion with open jaws on the reverse of coins whose obverse shows Herakles-Melqart, and smaller denominations combine a bearded head of Herakles with the same reverse. Salamis used the lion on its gold staters, which show a lion devouring its prey with an eagle on its back. Late in the series, Stasioikos II's bronze coins from Marion have a lion's head on the reverse and a Greek legend, which names the mint outright. The lion also appears indirectly, since Herakles, the commonest human figure on Cypriot coins, is shown wearing the lion skin. The animal's frequency makes uninscribed lion issues hard to attribute. For example, this archaic siglos with only a lion's head and an incuse punch has been assigned to Golgoi in older catalogues but is now listed as uncertain, or similar lion staters, with bull on reverse, have been tentatively suggested for Kourion (J. Kagan 1999, The Archaic and Early Classical Coinage of Kourion). Please find here the video of the coin